Dear Georgi, I can't be completely scientific in terms of a statistical inquiry as to percentages of length increases, but there certainly has been a trend in terms of 3 hour lengths for blockbusters in the last few years, and even in 3 recent films I saw--Black Hawk Down, In the Bedroom and Gosford Park, all of which I believe were 2 hours 20 minutes (and which varied according to genre, budget and "prestige value"). In terms of what accounts for it--since at least the seventies, and accelerating in the eighties and nineties, the big-budget, high production value blockbuster (often a special effects-laden, science fiction film) has driven the marketing and economic strategies of Hollywood. Gladiator was a new innovation, in terms of a reprise of the old blockbuster genre of the fifties--the Roman epic. Long films offer spectacle, and epic scale (think back to the Godfather cycle) and are marketed as 'special-event pictures' thus justifying their often unwieldy narrative scale. The nuances of very recent contemporary increases are yet unclear, and remain to be researched, but compared to the Classical Hollywood period (1929-1960) there is a definite change from the previously standard 90 minute feature American film. Best -- Dr Kirsten Moana Thompson Assistant Professor Department of English Wayne State University [log in to unmask] (313)577-3358 ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html